The Sixth International Hilandar
Conference will be held at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio,
July 19-21, 2013. The conference theme is Medieval Slavic Text and Image in the
Cultures of Orthodoxy. Abstracts (not to exceed 500 words in length) of
proposed presentations should be sent as Word.doc attachments to
hilandar@osu.edu <mailto:hilandar@osu.edu> prior to February 28, 2013.

For more information, see:
www.go.osu.edu/Hilandar <http://www.go.osu.edu/Hilandar

=============

Scenes from the History of the
Image (Research Triangle

Park, 28 Jul-9 Aug 13)

NationalHumanitiesCenter,
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina,

July 28 - August 9, 2013

Deadline: Feb 22, 2013

Summer Seminar

Scenes from the History of the
Image: Reading Two Millennia of Conflict

Seminar Leaders:

Thomas Pfau, Alice Mary Baldwin
Professor of English & Professor of

Germanic Languages and
Literatures, DukeUniversity.

David Womersley, Thomas Warton
Professor of English Literature, St.

Catherine's College, Oxford.

The purpose of this seminar is to
explore primary and critical writings

related to the history of the
image. It should be said at the outset

that this discussion is not an
attempt to run a seminar in art history.

Rather, the objective is to trace
how, in the course of Western

history, images have functioned
(and how their role has been

conceptualized), first in
religious practice and philosophical

theology, and more recently in
literature, philosophy, aesthetic

theory, and phenomenology.

At this time in history, Western
culture is arguably awash in images to

a degree never before
experienced. Digital culture has made every image

and visual artifact virtually
accessible to a vast number of

individuals in the developed and
developing worlds. Elaborate databases

such as ArtStor and Oxford Art
Online, as well as general-purpose

search engines (Google Images)
facilitate the retrieval of visual

materials with very little
censorship or accountability interposing

itself on the part of the
provider or end-user, respectively. At the

same time, the capacity of images
(cartoons, photographs, paintings) to

unleash public controversy by
tapping into otherwise submerged

religious, political, or cultural
energies and antagonisms seems

undiminished. More than most
textual forms—whose impact is typically

attenuated by the hermeneutic
demands that their linear and

propositional presentation makes
on readers—images seem uniquely

capable of bypassing or
suspending a more guarded and reflexive

interpretive appraisal.

The traumatic force with which
the images of the falling TwinTowers on

September 11, 2001 impacted and
shaped the political imaginary of an

entire generation of people in
the United States
and the Western world,

or similarly iconic moments such
as Robert Capra's famous photo of a

soldier's death during the
Spanish Civil War, Nick Ut's photo of a

young Vietnamese child burned by
napalm, Charlie Cole's 1989 snapshot

of a young man in a white shirt
blocking the advance of tanks in

Tiananmen
Square, Kurt Westergaard's 2005 cartoons of the Prophet

Mohammed—all attest to the
image's undiminished capacity for

concentrating and unleashing vast
reservoirs of moral and political

energy. It thus does not surprise
us to find political and religious

establishments from around the
world that are far more preoccupied with

controlling (or even expunging)
images than with articulating a

coherent message or rationally
engaging their perceived opponents.

Among the more egregious
instances of such practice might be the Afghan

Taliban's March 2001 decision to
detonate the early sixth-century

Buddhas of Bamiyan, or the G. W.
Bush administration's ban on releasing

photos of the coffins of dead
soldiers flown back from Iraq.

So as to understand the deeper
histories that resonate in such

controversies, and indeed set the
formal and moral parameters for them,

this seminar will seek to
undertake an archeology of the image in its

various dimensions: viz., as
material object, as a medium (often in

close competition with text), as
formal-aesthetic artifact, and as the

correlate of a distinctive kind
of human intentionality. To that end,

the 2013 SIAS seminar will
successively explore five historical and/or

formal ways of considering the
image—each time through a mix of primary

The University
of Illinois Press, the University Press
of Mississippi, and the University
of Wisconsin Press, in
cooperation with the American Folklore Society and with the support of the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, are collaborating to host an author's workshop at
the 2013 conference of the American Folklore Society for authors working on
their first book. Up to six authors will be selected to participate in a full
day of intensive activities devoted to critiquing and developing their
individual projects. Workshop activities will include one-on-one mentoring
sessions with editors and senior scholars and group discussions of revision and
editing strategies, publishing processes, and project critiques. A modest
stipend will be provided to participants to help defray the costs of attending
the workshop.

This opportunity is open only to
authors preparing their first books. Projects must be single-authored,
nonfiction books based on folklore research. Edited volumes, photography
collections with minimal text, and memoirs will not be considered.

Projects selected for the
workshop will be candidates for publication in the Presses' new collaborative
series, Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World, which aims to publish
exceptional first books that emphasize the interdisciplinary and/or
international nature of the field of folklore. Within the series, each Press
will focus on specific aspects of folklore studies related to its areas of
expertise: Illinois on gender and queer studies, world folk cultures, and
multiculturalism as manifested in forms of vernacular expression such as music,
dance, and foodways; Mississippi in folk art, American folk music, African
American studies, popular culture, and Southern folklife; and Wisconsin in
folklore studies that intersect with Upper Midwest cultures, Irish/Irish-American
studies, Jewish studies, Southeast Asian studies, gay/lesbian studies,
foodways, and travel. Applicants may indicate in their proposal whether they
have a preference of publisher.

Books in the series include
Squeeze This! A Cultural History of the Accordion in
America<http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/47bqd8bm9780252036750.html>
by Marion Jacobson and The Jumbies' Playing Ground: Old
World Influences on Afro-Creole Masquerades in the Eastern
Caribbean<http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1524> by Robert Wyndham
Nicholls.

I want to draw your attention to
some new materials.We have indexed and
posted the materials that I collected in Kazakhstan. Ukrainians arrived to
the area northeast of Pavlodar
at the turn of the 20th century. They came in response to the Stolypin reforms
and were pioneers who established villages. Later waves of immigration came
with the Khrushchev Virgin Lands policy and in the 1970s. All in all an
interesting group who have developed their own language (khokhliatskii) and
their own version of rituals.

This is a site where volunteers
can transcribe and translate recordings. Would love to have you try working
with these. The songs are in Ukrainian, even though the people themselves speak
a Ukrainian/Russian mix they call khokhliatskii. Would welcome your feedback
about these songs. Are they familiar? Are they similar to or different from the
songs you know?

H-FOLK

=================================

RussianStateUniversity for the
Humanities

Centre for Typological and
Semiotic Folklore Studies

On April 26th – May 5th 2013 the
Centre for Typological and Semiotic Folklore Studies at the Russian State
University for the Humanities (Moscow) will host the 13th International School
and Conference aimed at young researches working in the field of folkloristics,
ethnolinguistics and cultural anthropology entitled “Visual and verbal in folk
culture”.

The program of the School
includes conference-format papers (20 min.), lectures (50 min.), seminars,
master-classes, round tables, problem solving workshops, and screenings of
ethnographic films. The following topics are going to be covered:

— communicative peculiarities of
visual, actional, and verbal messages in folklore and ritual;

— visuality of texts and texts in
visual images.

During the School master-classes
on quantitative and qualitative methods, data-bases and indexes in anthropology
and folkloristics, round tables on visual anthropology, seminars on gesture
languages and gesture communication, semiotics of costume and ritual masks,
lectures on the evolution of sign behavior will be organized.

Specialists in these fields
willing to participate in the activities of the School should send their
proposals for lectures or seminars (400 words) to folkloreschool2013@gmail.com
before February 1, 2013 accompanied by a CV (not exceeding 3 pages).

Young researches (under 35) interested
in folkloristics, ethnolinguistics and bordering disciplines and willing to
attend the sessions of the School should send their abstracts (500-700 words)
to folkloreschool2013@gmail.com or solve the competition task.

The selection process will take
place till February 10th, 2013. To participate in the problem-solving
competition and/or abstracts competition (see the details on
http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/ls13.htm) you should register on-line at
https://sites.google.com/site/folkloreschool/ before January 30th, 2013.

The opening ceremony of the
School will take place in Moscow,
and the main sessions, in Pereslavl’-Zalessky.

Working languages: Russian and
English.

All the information concerning
the School can be found on http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore

The e-mail of the organising
committee: folkloreschool2013@gmail.com, telephone: +74999734354.

The Center for Ethnic and Nationalism Studies at Ivanovo State
University as well as the electronic journal “Labyrinth: A Journal of Social
and Humanitarian Studies” invite scholars to contribute to the collection “Bear
and Russia”.

The bear symbol, one of the most ancient and mysterious in the world
history, has been associated with Russia for several centuries. As an allegory
of the country, it has a significant impact on attitudes of foreigners towards
Russia and Russians. The image of bear widely circulates also in Russian culture,
especially in the post-Soviet period, when it pretends to being an unofficial
symbol of the nation.

How deeply is the bear as a metaphor of Russia rooted in the world
history? What meanings does the “Russian Bear” receive in Russian and foreign
cultures? How does the bear symbol influence the international security? How is
the “Russian Bear” utilized in the symbolic politics of contemporary Russia? Is
the “Russian Bear” a part of the “myth-symbol complex” of the Russian culture
or is it a case of the “invention of traditions”?

In searching answers to these questions the participants of the project
“ ’The Russian Bear’: History, Semiotics, and Politics” have organized a few
workshops and published a number of studies, including ‘Russkii Medved’:
Istoriia, Semiotika, Politika / Oleg Riabov, Andrzej de Lazari (Eds.). Moscow:
Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2012.
In 2013 the Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and
Understanding publishes a monograph by Andrzej de Lazari, Oleg Riabov and
Magdalena Żakowska Europa i Niedźwiedź (Wizerunek Rosji-niedźwiedzia w
kulturach europejskich).

We invite scholars to submit the articles till May 31, 2013 on the
themes as follows:

The image of bear in the world cultures;

The image of bear in regional identity;

“Russian Bear” in the rhetoric on domestic policy;

“Russian Bear”in the discourse
on international relations;

“Russian Bear”in the war propaganda;

“Russian Bear”in commercial advertising;

“Russian Bear”in literature and
arts;

“Russian Bear”in mass culture.

The articles will be published in a special issue of the journal
“Labyrinth”. The length of the article should comprise from 20 000 to 30 000
characters. Languages of the volume are Russian or English. Guide
instructionfor the authors is on the
web-site of the “Labyrinth”.

We are delighted to announce the
launch of a new AHRC funded researchnetwork called Partitions: What Are They Good For? which is acomparative partitions studies networkdevoted
to cutting-edge,

international and
interdisciplinary research on political partitionsacross a wide historical and geographical
span.

Everyday contemporary life has
been shaped, to some extent, by thepolitical partitioning of nations.9/11, the continued threat ofnuclear wars, the rising fundamentalist threat of Islam, the increasedmilitary interventions by a 'retaliating'
West are all considered tobe some of
the results of the partitions of Palestine and India.Forthose of us who live in Europe, partitions, reunifications and thethreats of partition (or promises of independence)
punctuate our dailynews.For manydifferent reasons, this is a timely moment to examine the phenomenonof partitions and their repercussions on a
global scale and to see howevents,
people, histories and ideas are all powerfully linked to eachother.

We propose to organise three
symposia over the next few months, allfocussing on different areas in the wide field of partition
studies.These events will be linked
with community engagement events ofvarious kinds, and the best papers and responses from the symposiawill be published as part of an edited
collection.

We are now calling for proposals
for the first symposium, to be heldon
June 3rd-4that Cardiff University, on
Partition and Cultural

Memory.

Questions we hope to engage with
include:

·How is cultural memory formed in the
aftermath of a partition?

·What is the relationship between
memory and ethnic or racial difference?

·How do people remember the nation
prior to partition?

·Does the nation-state shape forms of
memory?

·What is the relationship between
cultural and personal memory in
partition victims?

·How do post-memories mediate future
generations and citizenships?

This list is not intended to be
exhaustive and papers on any relevant topics will be considered. We welcome
submissions from any relevant discipline
including literature, history, sociology, philosophy, law, sociology, cultural studies, women's studies,
and politics.